On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 3:46 PM, Ken Teh <[email protected]> wrote: > Is it true that the network manager service turns off the network when > there is no activity? > > It is true that NetworkManager (one word, partly capitalized) has no business on any production system. It doesn't handle pair bonding, and it's a classic example of the sort of feature filled but configuration ruining and underdocumented tool that Eric Raymond ranted about years ago in his essay, "The Luxury of Ignorance".
Its sole use is laptops, hosts that wonder from network to network and need mostly-but-not-quite-useless management of VPN's and wireless access. > I just discovered that my desktops lost connection to the authentication > server. So, screen locks, gdm logins, remote ssh just stopped working. > Only when I logged in as root on the console did I notice that the > network was disabled and when I clicked on the the panel icon, it > reconnected. > > Rip it out if you can. Definitely set "NM_CONTROLLED=no" in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 or similar files. Is there some special config for the network manager to stop it from doing > this? Is there a kickstart option for this as well? > Kickstart these days relies on NetworkManager, especially in DHCP environments. A %post script to reset that variable and configure your local network as desired is extremely helpful. > I have, for the moment, disabled the network manager service and edited > the ifcfg-ethX files so they are no longer controlled by NM. I did this > for my headless servers, but I was surprised (annoyed is more accurate) > that this also affects "standard" client desktops. > Yeah, it's really designed to be active only when someone is logged in, not for stable servers or desktops.
